A Belfast astronomer has won two major international awards that will help establish Queen's University Belfast as a world leader in the research of supernovae or exploding stars.
Stephen Smartt (37), who lives in Holywood, Co Down, has received the European Young Investigator award worth €1.2 million over five years for his research into supernovae.
Dr Smartt, a lecturer in the department of physics and astronomy at Queen's, has also won the Philip Leverhulme prize worth £50,000 for his work.
Only four stars have been identified before and after they exploded, and Dr Smartt discovered three of them. The first detection, which was made in the 1980s by another astronomer, appeared to contradict the theory of what happened when stars become supernovae.
However, Dr Smartt's subsequent discoveries proved "They [supernovae] provide evidence of the accelerating expansion of the universe and the existence of the mysterious dark energy which drives this process. Yet very little is known about supernova progenitor stars."
His discoveries were based on a simple yet brilliant idea. "The Hubble telescope in space and the other giant telescopes in La Palma in the Canaries, in Chile and in Hawaii, have built up a huge archive of images from different galaxies. When new supernovae were identified I was able to go back through these archives to identify how the star looked before it exploded."
The work in identifying the three stars before and after they exploded and the matching of star to supernova was difficult and painstaking. The prize money will now allow him to set up a team of three astronomers, including himself, for a five-year project studying supernovae.
He will also be allowed special early access to the Hubble images. Dr Smartt said the study of supernovae is competitive and the award gives him and Queen's an edge over their chief competitors from the US.
"These explosions have produced the oxygen we breathe, the calcium in our bones and the minerals the earth is made of. They have given our solar system the chemical ingredients for life.
"We want to understand their origins to help trace the evolution of the universe," said Dr Smartt.